Healing isn’t an easy thing, is it? I mean, when the damage is substantial, or the illness left to go too long, there are ‘complications’. Life is that way, too, and emotional healing has potential complications all its own.
So much potential in our choices.
Wednesdays are therapy days for me. I do what I can to set clear boundaries, explicitly state needs for support, and clearly set expectations about any continued self-care once I get home. I don’t use a checklist, but I handle each piece with great care; my partners matter to me, their emotional wellness matters to me, and making room for them to enjoy their experience even when my own is less enjoyable in the moment matters to me, too. It rarely turns out well; they are also human, also making choices, also have needs, boundaries, limits of their own. Although we are ‘all in this together’, we are also each handling our baggage quite alone.
Yesterday’s session was very difficult, highly emotional, and I knew I wasn’t ‘done with it’ when I left my appointment. I wisely set expectations that I’d need some time meditating after I got home. I am learning more about recognizing what I need to take care of me, and learning to set clear expectations about those needs. There’s always more to learn; I apparently need some practice on following through. I got home to a house full of hungry people, eager to go out to dinner, and at least one of them irked with me that I hadn’t already said ‘yes’ or ‘no’, convinced I had been part of conversations about the matter. I hadn’t; I’d just arrived home, and there had been no opportunity to have those conversations with me. (One of the small common challenges of a poly amorous lifestyle, I find, is how easy it is to be mistaken about with whom a conversation happened.) I was hungry, myself, and facing the pressure of both my appetite and theirs, I caved to that pressure and went to dinner straight away. No meditation. That choice affected each moment that followed.
…stormy weather…
I learn more quickly from mistakes than from successes. I won’t likely forget that lesson any time soon.
Wednesdays are hard on me. Harder still to figure out how it is that each Wednesday I am at grave risk of further pain and turmoil at home (or how to remedy that). I either really really suck at expectation setting and maintaining boundaries, or my partners are totally human, wrapped up in their own needs and agenda, and just not particularly engaged with me in this area of my life. That’s pretty simplistic, and I suspect both are true to some extent, in varying amounts depending on circumstances. I could use a break on Wednesdays. I don’t know how to get there. I’d like tenderness, gentleness, kindness, compassion, loving support, lots of hugs and holding, intimate connection in a positive emotional framework… and I’d very much like my experience on Wednesdays to be understood to be ‘about me‘. It seems so simple in text. Somehow, it just isn’t that simple.
This is where my current focus on emotional self-sufficiency comes into play. The more emotionally self-sufficient I can become, the less I ‘need’ from my partnerships, friendships, lovers – and the more I can choose those relationships based on desire, enjoyment and shared values, and maintain them because they have value in my experience, not because they meet emotional needs. Honestly, I don’t see it as choosing between having my needs met by my relationships, versus meeting them myself. From my current vantage point it is more a matter of learning to meet my own needs where that potential exists, versus having those needs met in a haphazard hit or miss way when they can be met by someone else at all. Each Wednesday that I struggle to fulfill emotional needs that are a byproduct of my therapy experience, I learn more about being self-reliant emotionally, which seems worthwhile.
I’ve changed a lot over the past year. It has gotten pretty lonely sometimes, and I experience profound moments of self-doubt, and doubts about my relationships. I say that because it isn’t always obvious to me that this is common to the human experience, generally, and later I may need this reminder that it is quite common indeed. 🙂
…Eventually the light breaks through the darkness, and there is a new day…
Here we are, a new day. An opportunity for new choices. Today is a good day for choices, and for change. Today is a good day to take care of me. Today is a good day to treat others with kindness, and myself too while I’m at it. Today is a good day to change the world.
